An article today in the Decatur (Ala.) Daily about the FTC’s approval of the United Launch Alliance includes this passage:

“Decatur might want to rename itself Space Port America,” said Loren Thompson, Ph.D., a military and aerospace analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., and a Lockheed consultant.

Since Thompson immerses himself in military issues, he may have forgotten than the name “Spaceport America” is already used by New Mexico’s fledgling spaceport. (Moreover, they actually don’t launch anything in Decatur, only build rockets.) And don’t think about turning the phrase around and calling Decatur “America’s Spaceport”: that’s taken, too.

Today marks the second anniversary of SpaceShipOne’s capture of the $10-million Ansari X Prize with its second suborbital spaceflight in under a week. (Of course, they didn’t officially get the check until a ceremony in St. Louis the following month; details, details.) MSNBC’s Alan Boyle reflects on the anniversary and asks, in essence: dude, where’s my spaceship? There haven’t been any manned commercial suborbital spaceflights since SpaceShipOne’s final flight two years ago, and it will be a while before the next takes place. (I voiced similar comments back in June, on the second anniversary of SS1’s first space flight.) Boyle does find some optimism about the future from Peter Diamandis and Gary Hudson; Hudson in particular believes the number of self-funded ventures that don’t need to be constantly fundraising is the key difference between now and past false starts. “Investors are easily spooked,” Hudson said. “Zealots – and I mean that in the good sense – are not.”